Half-Life: Alyx’s latest impressive feat? Getting up and running inside Leap Motion’s Project North Star open-source AR headset.
The project was recently shown off by Bryan Chris Brown, who serves as Community Manager for North Star. He showed Valve’s beloved VR hit running inside the headset. North Star is an open-source device, meaning anyone can iterate on its design, but its lenses already feature a wide field of view. In the video a camera moves from the real world before peering behind the lens to see the world of City 17 stretching out in front of them.
It’s hard to tell from the video but the image is translucent; look at when the lenses cover a doorway on the bottom right of the screen towards the end of the video. Brown noted that, if you were to play in the dark, you’d see essentially a full VR image, or you could cover the back of the lenses with a black matte material to get the same effect too.
Currently there’s also a gesture system implemented for hand-control – Leap Motion’s specialty – but that’s not shown off in the video and apparently needs a lot more work. This wouldn’t be the best way to experience Alyx itself, but it’s certainly a fascinating project. It’s also one of the first times we’ve seen North Star in action ever since Ultrahaptics bought Leap Motion last year.
Don’t hold your breath for an AR version of Half-Life: Alyx just yet, then. But if you’re interested in seeing what else Valve’s latest can do, you should definitely check out the influx of mods for the game.
Today AR headset manufacturer Combine Reality revealed the CR Deck Mk.1, an open source AR headset based on Project North Star that utilizes Ultraleap hand-tracking. A Kickstarter campaign is coming soon.
Details are scarce so far, but Combine Reality unveiled images and short video clips of the new AR headset on Twitter. Utilizing the open source Project North Star program and Ultraleap’s hand-tracking, it aims to deliver an accessible development kit for AR developers that’s “easily remixable with off-the-shelf components & modules” according to the announcement tweet.
On the official Combine Reality website, it states this will be:
An open-source, community-driven AR hardware platform with Unity and SteamVR integration, built around the world’s most advance optical hand-tracking technology. Featuring brilliant 1440x1600px per eye displays at up to 120Hz.
Combine Reality also showed colorized teaser images of a CR Deck Mk.2 prototype that are purely just sketches, not even actual renders, with an embedded Intel Real Sense SLAM module. Reportedly it’ll be included in some capacity in the upcoming Kickstarter campaign as well.
That’s everything we know right now. For more specs and details on the construction of the headset, check out this development blog.
If you want to learn more you can sign up for a newsletter that will let you know once the Kickstarter campaign goes live. The campaign appears to be for an “injection molded version of the Project North Star headset” that will bypass the need for 3D printing. They’ve also got details on how you can build your own Project North Star headset using from Smart Prototyping. The About Us page mentions it’s possible
Better known for its hand-tracking technology, Leap Motion delved into augmented reality (AR) headset design in 2018 announcing Project North Star. Designed as an open source reference for developers to create their own headset, Leap Motion has recently the latest major design update, further improving the overall build and look of the project.
The new design has seen a range of adjustments to the frame and build, with one of the most important being a new facial interface, allowing the headsets optics to ‘float’ as the company calls it in front of the users face. This is achieved by the headset only touching the user’s forehead, enabling glasses to be used with Project North Star for the first time.
The image above indicates all the new adjustments Leap Motion has made to Project North Star, solving previous issues such as the optics bracket sliding away from the face occasionally. A one-way brake mechanism has been mounted to each side which allows the headset to be slid towards a users face, but not outwards unless the brake release is held.
The Leap Motion Blog goes on to explain another neat little improvement, and that’s how they made curved sections stronger: “Finally, a little trick we developed for this headgear design: bending 3D prints. An ideal VR/AR headset is light yet strong, but 3D prints are anisotropic – strong in one direction, brittle in another. This means that printing large thin curves will likely result in breaks.
“Instead, we printed most of the parts flat. While the plastic is still warm from the print bed, we drape the plastic over a mannequin head. A few seconds later, the plastic cools enough to retain the curved shape. The end result is very strong while using very little plastic.”
As it has been from the start Project North Star is an open-source project, with advancements coming from Leap Motion’s San Francisco tech hub as well as the open source community. If you want to get involved with the project simply head to the Project North Star GitHub. to download all the relevant materials. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
A few weeks ago Leap Motion released the files for the reference design of its Project North Star augmented reality (AR) headset. The team have now released an update to the North Star headset assembly that adds some improvements and the addition of the Leap Motion Controller.
The Project North Star has several advantages over other commercially available AR headsets in terms of field-of-view, and the release of the files allowed developers to create their own version of the headset using 3D printers. The updated files adds support for alternate headgear and fittings for the Leap Motion Controller.
The Leap Motion controller is a hand-tracking system that was one of the first projects released by the company. The latest addition to the open source CAD files for Project North Star have been updated to allow for the Leap Motion controller to be added to the assembly. The creators also took the opportunity to make other changes to improve the overall design.
An alternate headgear option has been added. Most variants of the design have supported the Miller headgear as a basis to ‘hang’ the other components on, but the team at Leap Motion preferred the more comfortable 3M Speedglas Utility headgear, so a new options has been added, enabling more choices when building North Star prototypes.
The latest file release also introduces Torsion hinges to lighten the clamping load needed to stop optics from pressing down on a user’s face. Two torsion springs fight gravity acting on the optics, allowing the optics to be suspended above the nose, letting users flip up the visor with little effort. This is believed to make for a more comfortable experience.
Further information can be found on the Leap Motion blog and the build guide. The files themselves can be found on GitHub. As usual, VRFocuswill keep you updated on the latest concerning Leap Motion and Project North Star.
Leap Motion attracted a great deal of attention when it announced the prototype of a new augmented reality (AR) headset which offered an increased field of vision beyond what currently available hardware such as the Microsoft HoloLens can currently offer.
The headset was called Project North Star, and the company has now announced a new demo that shows off some of the capabilities of the headset prototype and what would be possible for its commercial use.
Leap Motion previously released the schematics for the reference design of Project North Star, along with a short guide on how to build a North Star headset, giving creators and businesses the opportunity to create their own version of the headset.
The new demo uses Table Tennis to show how the Project North Star hardware can work with Leap Motion hand tracking combined with a handheld paddle controller. By using the paddle, users can cause the virtual ball to bounce across the table, with an AI opponent to act as a challenge to the user.
The AR Table Tennis demo is designed to show how the AR headset can be used to train skills in a way that can be transferred into real life. The team at Leap Motion hope that Project North Star can be used as part of a system to optimise a task or behaviour.
The Table Tennis demo uses physics simulations to keep the AR experience accurate to the real world, so any hand-eye coordination and muscle memory built up using the simulation can be transferred into the real world.
Leap Motion said as part of its press release: “The realism and physical reproducibility of this demo were built with the intent that the user should grow in their understanding of the system by interacting with it. As a medium, AR has the potential to improve how we learn about and interact with the real world. Simulations like this have the unique ability to adjust their difficulty downward to accommodate novices and upward to challenge experts in a whole new way – appealing to players at all skill levels.”
Further information can be found on the Leap Motion blog, along with YouTube videos of the demo. Further news on Leap Motion will be covered here on VRFocus.
Leap Motion has found a new use for its open source AR headset, North Star; table tennis.
The hand-tracking specialist today revealed a new demo for its headset, which was announced last April. Whereas we’ve seen North Star handle advanced AR UI, table tennis showcases some other features of the headset. For starters, it allows the player to jump into a virtual game of the sport using a real table and a specialized paddle; the headset creates both the ball and an AI opponent for you to challenge.
Using a hand gesture the player summons a virtual ball and then serves it just like they would a real one. The opponent, meanwhile, is designed to make only humanly possible returns, giving you a real game of table tennis without anyone there to practice with. Check it out in the video below.
But what may first appear as a simple game has deeper implications about the future of AR training and beyond.
“Eventually, as AR systems become more advanced and lifelike, we will be able to practice against “impossibly difficult” artificial opponents and use that intuition in the real world like never before,” Leap Motion’s Johnathon Selstad said in a blog post. “Current and near-future professions may be aided by advanced AR training systems that allow us to casually achieve levels of skill that previously required months of determined practice.”
For now these demo is purely experimental, just like North Star itself.
Earlier this year Leap Motion had been teasing some very compelling AR interface prototypes, demonstrated on an unknown headset. The company revealed that the headset is a prototype dev kit, designed in-house, offering a combined 100 degree field of view, low latency, and high resolution. Leap Motion has begun open-sourcing the design of the device, which they’re calling Project North Star.
Update (6/6/18): Leap Motion has begun the process of open-sourcing the North Star headset. Today the company published a new hub page for project North Star and detailed documentation showing how to construct the headset. Mechanical and electronic schematics and designs have been release on GitHub, and everything falls under an Apache 2.0 license.
Image courtesy Leap Motion
“Our goal is for the reference design to be accessible and inexpensive to build, using off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts. At the same time, these are still early days and we’re looking forward to your feedback on this initial release. The mechanical parts and most of the software are ready for primetime, while other areas are less developed,” the company notes on its blog. “The reflectors and display driver board are custom-made and expensive to produce in single units, but become cost-effective at scale. We’re also exploring how the custom components might be made more accessible to everyone.”
The company promises additional details and updates to the open-sourced information “in the coming weeks.”
Original Article (4/9/18): Founded in 2010, Leap Motion develops leading hand-tracking hardware and software. Though their first piece of hardware was designed for desktop input, the company pivoted into VR, and more recently the AR space, exploring how their hand-tracking tech can enable new and intuitive means of interacting with virtual and augmented information.
With AR hardware still in its infancy, the company sought to build their own in-house prototype AR headset, targeting specifications far beyond what’s available to consumers today. This was so they could design AR interfaces, based on their hand tracking tech, targeting the capabilities of future AR headsets. They’re calling this work Project North Star, and plan to open-source the design next week, saying that such a headset could cost “under $100 dollars to produce at scale.”
Image courtesy Leap Motion
The prototype headset uses side-mounted displays with large ‘bird bath’ style optics (similar to the Meta 2 approach), which afford the device a 1,600 × 1,400 per-eye resolution at 120 FPS, with over 100 degrees of combined field of view, and hand-tracking from the company’s latest hardware which tracks at 150Hz over a 180 × 180 degree area.
The version of Project North Star which Leap Motion plans to open-source is actually a pared back version of an earlier prototype which boasted greater specs, but was quite a burden to wear. The team at Leap Motion constructed this earlier version as a baseline of what could be achieved.
An earlier Project North Star prototype aimed to embody top specs, but wasn’t very concerned with form factor. | Image courtesy Leap Motion
“[…] we wanted to create something with the highest possible technical specifications, and then work our way down until we had something that struck a balance between performance and form-factor,” the company shared on its blog today. “[…] The vertical field of view struck us most of all; we could now look down with our eyes, put our hands at our chests and still see augmented information overlaid on top of our hands. This was not the minimal functionality required for a compelling experience, this was luxury.”
With a good look at what could be achieved, the team used masking tape over the lenses to crop down the field of view to get a feel for how much they could reduce the size of the lenses before losing some of the essential experience due to the lower field of view. Once they found that balance they began the process of cutting smaller optics and shrinking the headset, moving from cell phone displays to a custom display system using a pair of 3.5″ fast-switching LCD displays.
“We ended up with something roughly the size of a virtual reality headset. In whole it has fewer parts and preserves most of our natural field of view. The combination of the open air design and the transparency generally made it feel immediately more comfortable than virtual reality systems (which was actually a bit surprising to everyone who used it),” the company writes. “[…] Putting this headset on, the resolution, latency, and field of view limitations of today’s [AR] systems melt away and you’re suddenly confronted with the question that lies at the heart of this endeavor: What shall we build?”
Indeed, with hardware in hand, the company has been focusing on that question; using a wearable camera, it was the Project North Star prototype through which Leap Motion’s VP of Design, Keiichi Matsuda, shot those tantalizing ‘virtual wearable’ prototype videos which we recently called “a potent glimpse at the future of your smartphone.”
Image courtesy Leap Motion
Leap Motion says they have a few tweaks left to do before open-sourcing the Project North Star design next week, including “room for enclosed sensors and electronics, better cable management, cleaner ergonomics and better curves […] and support for off the shelf head-gear mounting systems.”
There’s also a number of areas where Leap Motion says that Project North Star is ripe for further development:
Inward-facing embedded cameras for automatic and precise alignment of the augmented image with the user’s eyes as well as eye and face tracking.
Head mounted ambient light sensors for 360 degree lighting estimation.
Directional speakers near the ears for discrete, localized audio feedback
Electrochromatic coatings on the reflectors for electrically controllable variable transparency
Micro-actuators that move the displays by fractions of a millimeter to allow for variable and dynamic depth of field based on eye convergence
With the open-sourcing of the Project North Star hardware and software, Leap Motion hopes that the design will “spawn further endeavors that will become available to the rest of the world.”
Last month, Leap Motion caused quite a stir in the world of augmented reality (AR) when it showed off the prototypes for its AR headset, dubbed Project North Star. As part of that same project, the company are now releasing the reference design for the AR headset.
The release of the schematics for the reference design forms part of a wider initiative to make Project North Star into an open source AR hardware and UX design centered on interaction.
The information being released consists of the headset design along with a short guide on how to build a North Star headset. The open source is being released under an Apache license, with interested parties able to obtain the documentation through the Leap Motion website.
Leap Motion became known initially for its work in hand and finger tracking before branching out into creating a design for an AR headset. The company says its aim was to create a device that allowed for a high-quality AR experience while still remaining comfortable.
The prototype headset produced for Project North Star had a large field-of-view, with each eye seeing an AR field-of-view of 95° x 70° with a 20 degree vertical (downwards) tilt and a 65% stereo overlap and 1,600 x 1,440 pixels for each eye.
Leap Motion intends to continue to post updates to the release package and is panning on releasing further AR UX designs, such as virtual wearable and a Desk user interface. Leap Motion is hoping that the release of the schematics and documentation will stimulate discussions on AR technology and help to improve accessibility and accelerate experimentation in the field of AR.
“Our vision is to create a future where the physical and virtual worlds blend together into a single magical experience.” Leap Motion said in a media statement.
For further news on Leap Motion and Project North Star, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Earlier this month Leap Motion, the company behind the hand-tracking depth senor, revealed they have been working on an augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display (HMD) dubbed Project North Star. This project is aiming to bring the expertise of Leap Motion’s hand-and-finger tracking and integrate it with AR technology and build a seamless HMD that utilizes the latest technology to offer the best hands-free AR experience.
Since the reveal of the Project North Star, the company have continued to share a number of images and videos that explore what they are hoping to achieve with this product. Leap Motion is push the notion that “it’s time to shift the conversation from what an AR system should look like, to what an AR experience should feel like” and with these demonstrations, it is clear that Leap Motion has a clear goal in mind.
In a series of Tweets the company revealed some new work-in-progress demos of possible user interact solutions that could be used with Project North Star and hand-tracking. This includes a number of clips that showcase the hand tracking in motion, with the high response time being impressive to see. Other clips include 3D objects being held, transformed and interacted with within virtual space all thanks to the HMD and the hand tracking technology. The most impressive of which was shown off in a recent Tweet where Leap Motion demonstrated user interfaces that are collapsible.
By interacting with a small white bar that acts as a spawn location for the interface, it reacts when the user moves their hand towards the interface. This can then be picked up, pulled around, placed both on the surface and in the air and even be interacted with while it is being held. The interfaces appears to have a sense of weight to it as well and still allows for users to pass through them without disturbing there placement.
These prototypes of possible user interface applications for Project North Star are as exciting as they are interesting. As Leap Motion continue to work on the AR HMD and document their journey, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest, so stay tuned for more.
Leap Motion, the company behind the hand-tracking depth sensor, recently tweeted out another through-the-headset view of a prototype UI, this time centered on how some simple elements might work in the “augmented office” of the near future.
Using the company’s prototype dev kit, dubbed Project North Star, Leap Motion serves up another host of interesting design concepts. Keeping the user interface fairly muted until it’s needed, the company shows how a ‘minimized’ AR element like an event reminder could hide in plain sight.
By moving your hand closer to the small white bar, which is projected to appear on the edge of a desk, you can produce a 2D window, pick it up, place it in mid-air, and even lay it down flat on a desk. Notably, the windows appear to have a ‘weightiness’ about them that make them appear more natural in the environment.
The company says everything in the video “is filmed directly through the headset. Zero trickery.”
“Right now our work in AR is extremely early, and there are many steps between prototyping and product,” the company said in a follow-up tweet. “We’re interested in inclusive design and accessibility, but given that we don’t plan on releasing our own headset, in the context of this project it would be a dead end.”
Image courtesy Leap Motion
First revealed earlier this month, the Project North Star AR headset boasts a 100 degree field of view, low latency, and high-resolution. Leap Motion plans to open-source the design of the device, saying that such a headset could cost “under $100 dollars to produce at scale.”
